


Darkening Sky

by Other_Pens



Category: The London Life (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Angst, Childbirth, F/M, Other, Regency, Regency Romance, Traumatic birth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 11:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7975024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Other_Pens/pseuds/Other_Pens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>George makes a choice and a promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darkening Sky

_have mercy please on the one that I love,  
her body's too weary to run..._

 

 _1810_  
  
It had never been like this, before.  
  
George had always been a jangle of raw nerves at the birth of each of his children...Freddie had seemed, to him, to be astoundingly calm, by comparison. He'd worn holes in the carpet with the kind of pacing that the midwife had seen in every sort of house she'd ever entered. Four times she'd been called out to attend Mrs. Haverleigh, and for the fifth, she'd been surprised to find it taking as long as it was. There was little else to do but wait for things to progress in the usual fashion, and there was no point worrying the mother with any foreboding as to the health of the child until they might know more. What would be would be, and they would take what they were given.  
  
Freddie had walked miles, it seemed, up and down the length of the room, pausing for the pains that robbed her of breath and speech, leaving her with only the hoarse, low cry that was not entirely conscious, but almost as much a sound from the whole of her being as the creaking of branches belonged to a storm-battered wood.  
  
George knew the sound, but it never became any more bearable to hear, and his only fervent prayer was that it might be over quickly, and safely.  
  
He only got half his wish.  
  
He had been wrong, it turned out, to imagine that Freddie's agonized wails were the worst.  
  
Her eventual silence terrified him even more.  
  
His harried-looking sister came to find him as often as she could be spared in those long hours which had stretched into days.  
  
"Nothing yet...she is only growing so tired..."  
  
The unfinished sentences, the possibilities no-one wanted to speak or even think of...George felt every one of them burning like a brand upon his soul.  
  
He could not lose her, surely? Other men lost their wives--but not him. He tried to take such care of her...he _loved_ her, as he had never loved anyone.  
  
For the first time in his life, George Haverleigh felt that love might not be enough.  
  
Even being a man of moderate faith, the amount of desperate bargaining he then entered into with the Almighty was considerable.  
  
One day became two, and at long last, Mrs. Haverleigh had been safely delivered of a little girl, who was to be named for the aunt who had attended at her mother's bedside for the whole of that harrowing labour. The child was healthy, and the mother well, though reasonably exhausted by the event.  
  
George had not lost a moment when he was called in to see his wife, and the two were left alone with the infant laid in a little basket at her mother's bedside.  
  
"My God, Freddie," he whispered, unable to keep his voice from trembling before he kissed her forehead, where the dark curls of her hair were still damp with sweat, and her skin almost as pale as the clean white sheets tucked around her.  
  
"It's all done with," she assured him with a weak smile, her shadowed eyes all aglow with incandescent happiness.  
  
"You need to rest."  
  
"So do you..." she laughed, reaching up to touch the rough line of his unshaven cheek. "Just hold me for a little while, George."  
  
He held her, then, and watched as she slipped almost immediately into a deep sleep, too weary even to stir among dreams, but only lay still, almost as if...as if...  
  
George swore under his breath and tore his gaze from her, looking wretchedly at the ceiling until the little movements of his baby daughter drew his attention, and he rose to tiptoe over to the basket, where the infant was squirming against the bounds of her swaddling. He brushed the tip of one finger against her rosy cheek, flushed even where Freddie was now pale, and recalled the days their other children had come into the world.  
  
It had never been easy...but it had never been this difficult. Four, and now five children, and George wondered how near they had come to losing their mother. Freddie _had_ lost hers.  
  
_Enough,_ thought George. _We are enough. I won't let this happen again. I won't let_ that _happen._  
  
"I can't..." he whispered aloud, to no-one.  
  
He left the sleeping child and turned back to look at his wife. How long he stood there, counting her slow and steady breaths, he could not say.  
  
At last, he bent and kissed her, softly, so as not to wake her--if indeed she could have been woken from that sleep her worn-out body so desperately required.  
  
"It's all done with," he assured her, letting his forehead rest against hers as he made his promise to her, to their children, and to himself.  
  
He left her, then, to sleep, and to recover; shutting the door behind him to the room he would never enter again.

 

 _oh stay my love,_  
please open your eyes,  
and promise me you'll never leave...


End file.
